JESUS SAW HIMSELF IN GENESIS About change To Know: ³¹No please!¹ said Jacob. ŒIf I have found favor in your eyes, accept this gift from me. For to see your face is like seeing the face of God, now that you have received me favorably.¹² (Gen. 33:10) It was not only Jacob who God changed at the river Jabbok. Esau changed too. Esau came to wage war with Jacob, whose name was now Israel. It was in order to fight that Jacob¹s brother came to meet him with four hundred men. Something Jacob could not have expected happened when the two men met. Rather than fight, ³ŠEsau ran to meet Jacob and embraced him; he threw his arms around his neck and kissed him. And they wept.² (33:4) Esau doubtless came for revenge but sometime before he arrived he became a changed man. Are we not to understand that in order to bless Jacob the Lord needed to make Esau an instrument of blessing? In order to see God face to face and survive, Esau must change. We read in chapter 27, ³Esau held a grudge against Jacob because of the blessing his father had given him. He said to himself, ŒThe days of mourning for my father are near; then I will kill my brother Jacob.² (27:41) Jesus saw himself in the place of Esau. In order for Christ to bless the world he needed to be willing to forgive sinners. David revealed the attitude of a fallen world toward Jesus Christ in the 2nd Psalm. ³Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against his Anointed One.² Are we not the kings of the earth of whom David speaks? Do not sinners strive to rule their own lives? Is that not why the cry that Christ be cursed is a downright visceral? In order to bless sinners who seek his place, Christ did not, like Esau, need to be changed. It was the God who is love who because incarnate in order to bless those who seek to enthrone themselves in the place that rightly belongs to Jesus Christ. 020210$-020210 <š{{{{{{>< AA Other posts:
• Genesis 6 ( not 5 ) the Flood did indeed happen and this is how the
Atheists help prove it... ( from alt.talk.creationism )
• Atheists are atheists simply because God made them that way... Eph. 2:12 • About Edom • About God's promise to Abraham • About justice • About change • About Peniel • About God's work in Jesus • About Jacob's ladder • About God's demonstration of love for us • About the mystery of the faith |